From 1925 to 1938 he was editor of the English Historical Review; he was elected a Fellow of the British Academy in 1929[3] and was appointed as Cambridge's first Professor of Medieval History in 1937, holding the position until 1942.

[4] Previté-Orton's major work, in conjunction with Zachary Nugent Brooke, was to oversee as editor the later volumes of the eight-volume Cambridge Medieval History, completed in 1937.

[4] According to Barrie Dobson, who would some four decades later succeed to the chair of medieval history at Cambridge, in the opinion of those who knew him personally, as a scholar Previté was lucid and accurate but passionless rather than original.

As an editor, however, he was critical, shrewd, painstaking, and generous: few scholars made so sustained a contribution to the reputation of medieval studies at Cambridge during the first half of the twentieth century.

[4]In 1913, Previté-Orton married his first cousin, Ellery Swaffield Orton; they had a daughter, Rosalind.